Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.

Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating.

I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.

Attention to detail and a perfectionist instinct, far from stimulating action, are character qualities that lead to renunciation. Better to dream than to be.

Art consists in making others feel what we feel.

Sometimes, when I wake up at night, I feel invisible hands weaving my destiny.

Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.